The biggest disadvantage of standards-based reporting is that it causes too much confusion among parents and students. In the past, if a student received an "A," the parents knew she scored between a 90 and 100 percent. With standards-based report cards, a three is proficient, meaning at grade level. However, parents see a three as being a "B," since a four should equal an "A," and they get upset because their daughter always received perfect marks until standards-based reporting came along. They don't realize that the goal of standards-based learning is to be proficient.
Standards-based reporting provides too much information. Some school district report cards have more than 10 different areas they assess in math, such as "Computes accurately" or "Explains their thinking using mathematical reasoning." Unless parents and students deeply understand the curriculum, they do not understand what 95 percent of the report card is telling them. Parents want the quick and dirty: Does their child understand math or not? Too much information can hide deficiencies that students have because parents and students begin counting the number of fours and threes the student received on his report card, instead of looking at each individual standard and what they truly can do.
One of the biggest complaints of teachers is that standards-based reporting is too subjective. With traditional grades, teachers simply had to add up the student's scores and divide it by the total points possible to determine an average. Not so with standards-based. There is no magic average. In fact, in many cases teachers from the same district do not even use the same tools to determine if a student is meeting standard or not. This may not be a big deal until a student transfers from one school in a district to another, and he is assessed in a completely different manner, leading to mass confusion and frustration on the student's part.
With all the different standards to assess, completing a standards-based report card is much more time consuming than a traditional report card. For example, on a traditional report card a student received one grade in reading. However, on a standards-based report card a teacher may be evaluating a student on seven different categories of reading, from fluency, to the ability to predict, to summarizing. This extra time spent filling out report cards means less time to create stimulating lessons or help students with needs.